During recent travels over the heart of our nation’s fossil fuel development and storage centers, a realization descended upon me in a new and sudden way. As I peered out of my porthole window at the landscape below, it struck me that a simple glimpse at the current state of our world is the only […]
Read More The Environmental Case for Extraterrestrial ResourcesJust a quick note today on a fun, recent interview I gave with Paul Carr on the Wow! Signal Podcast, where I had the opportunity to discuss the very conceptual genesis of my personal scientific journey as a geologist and space scientist: the lure, importance, and incredible promise of asteroid mining and capitalizing on extraterrestrial […]
Read More Pushing Asteroid Mining on the Wow! Signal PodcastResearchers at the Tsinghua University in Beijing recently published a plan just daring enough to work/make people nervous. After an extensive review of the orbits of thousands of candidate near-Earth objects, the research team headed by Associate Professor Baoyin Hexi identified a small asteroid that with a nudge at the opportune moment would settle into […]
Read More Plans afoot for snaring a space rockThe Obama Administration’s recent space initiative scraps former President Bush’s Orion moon program and planned moon base in favor of three basic components: Private industry, an asteroid rendezvous by 2025, and a manned Mars orbit by 2035. Not wasting any time on nostalgia, aerospace industry giant Lockheed Martin, who had been helming the all-but-cancelled Orion […]
Read More Lockheed Martin’s asteroid gambitPresident Obama has recently scrapped our push to get to the Moon by 2020. For the most part, I agree with the decision. However, there is something making a lot of play in the press that I feel the need to address – Namely, the many vocal assertions that there is no good reason to […]
Read More Why go back to the Moon?
Chronicles of an Atomic Astrowright 